South Africa’s land reform stalemate must end

DURING the peak years of apartheid, I remember a one-metre high graffiti on a wall in a suburb that read “X CAN’T READ THIS”.

- SHABODIEN ROOMANAY

(I will not mention X’s name, but X participated in the tri-cameral, race-tainted system to devolve some power to nonwhite races.) If the nation does not resolve the issue of restitution and redistribution with urgency, then the large writ now on the wall says: “THE GOVERNMENT CAN'T READ THIS”Thirty years after the advent of democracy, the promise of land reform remains one of South Africa's most broken commitments. It is a wound that festers not because the country lacks a constitutional mandate, but because of a catastrophic failure of political will. District 6 in Cape Town is one such example. Both the ANC’s Freedom Charter and the Constitution of 1996 enshrined land reform as a foundational principle of a just society.

Yet today, less than 14% of agricultural land has been transferred, far short of the original target of 30% set for 2014. To be fair, much work has been done. But the backlog and the slow pace of transacting might lead the nation to a bridge too far. Pent-up expectations lead to the possibility of uncontrollable civil strife.

Iam concerned that we are sitting on a powder keg. The fuse of unrest waiting to be lit. The choice South Africa faces is not between protecting property rights and addressing landlessness, as the debate is often framed. The real choice is between decisive action now and the slow drift toward serious social conflict that unresolved land injustice inevitably produces.

To understand the paralysis, we must diagnose the disease. The delay is not accidental; it is the product of a policy framework and administrative culture that have turned a moral imperative into a bureaucratic maze. A wasteland of ineptitude, a jungle of employment in the bloated civil service where having the job is more important than doing the work.